18 May
2007
18 May
'07
6:39 p.m.
On May 18, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Chris M wrote:
I have a 7300. I've come to learn a bit about the
3B1,
which could be considered the same thing (?).
Yup, nearly identical...the biggest difference is the "hump" under
the monitor that allows a 3B1 to accept a full-height drive.
Contrary to nomenclature, the 3B1 bears neither resemblance nor
lineage to any other member of the 3B family.
I have a load of disks and docs for the 7300?.
Unfortunately they were all stored improperly and are
worthless. Being I already have the media (and can
prove it) I'd like to have working images of these
disks. Anyone have a clue?
My hard drive does work, but is a bit flakey maybe :(
The thing is a pitn to open up :{
I'd be very interested to hear from humans who are
knowledgeable of these units, and more so by those who
are currently playing with them.
Well I'm not currently playing with them, and I haven't in a few
years (but I will once more of my new house is arranged properly),
but I've used them extensively, and I used to sell and repair them
when they were current. If you do find a repository of disk images,
I'd be interested in having copies of them.
The 7300/3B1 is a great design, done by Convergent...a full (for
the time) UNIX SysVr2 implementation with a GUI in a very small
desktop machine, in ~1986! The first ones that were shipped had
512KB of RAM and a 10MB hard drive. Disk space was tight, but it was
workable. The graphics are 720x348 monochrome (same as Hercules on
PCs), and the GUI (called "ua", User Agent) is easily configurable
with text files. There was an Ethernet card available for
it...Wollongong wrote the IP stack, but it was terribly unstable and
crashed the whole machine frequently.
Damn fun machines, I must say.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL